


in colour

by the-bi-sokka-club (blametheone)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Flowers, Gen, building relationships, friendships, thats it that’s the whole thing, the gaang explain colour to toph
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:07:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23822074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blametheone/pseuds/the-bi-sokka-club
Summary: The Gaang help Toph experience colour, and Aang isn’t so good with words.
Relationships: Aang & Toph Beifong
Comments: 9
Kudos: 143





	in colour

**Author's Note:**

> not blind and i know nothing about flowers i just had a 2am idea and brought it to life.
> 
> (also, personal headcanon for all my modern au’s is that toph has a failed seeing eye dog and his legal name is boring so the gaang call him beef jerky.)

Toph never really cared about sight. It was something she had never, and would never experience, so she wasn’t too invested in trying to understand it. But, while scrolling through social media she had stumbled across a creative writing exercise for fiction authors, ‘describe colour as if you were describing it to a blind person.’

It was a curious perspective, to try and understand something that only existed in the visual realm when she had no sight, and she had ignored it initially at the sheer ridiculousness of it.

In the week following, she noticed just how often her friends talked about colour. It was in most of their sentences, not always, but often. 

“Katara, which keys are yours?”

“The ones with the purple tag!”

“Should I wear my red shirt or the red and black one?”

“What about the burgundy?”

“Hey, Sokka, do you have a darker hair tie? This one doesn’t match my colour and it’s super visible.”

“Zuko, that doesn’t matter even a little bit, but yes, there are some black ones in the bathroom cupboard.”

Her curiosity, eventually, got the better of her.

~*~

Toph had expected Zuko’s words to be stunted, and unflowing. She expected him to not be able to do it, that he wouldn’t be able to describe colour without visuals.

She wasn’t prepared for him to put his hot mug of freshly brewed tea into her hands and let her absorb the warmth until it became unbearable as he spoke in a soft, low voice.

Zuko says that red is the colour of a loud bang, close and hot and unwanted. It sears in a way temperature can not touch, it does not feel warm to look at it feels sore to look at. Red is stop, no, fuck off. Red sucks.

~*~

Sokka’s word choice was clunky, but the way he spoke created a whole new world around Toph, like she could feel his description as a physical sensation.

Sokka says that blue is odd. At its darker shades, mostly it is a deep, angry melancholy, a loud and all consuming noise like being at the bottom of the ocean and still feeling the force of the waves. The lighter the shade gets, the smaller this feeling is, and at the lighter end, it feels less overwhelming and more like a sigh. When it reaches a pale teal it is comforting, quiet, a soft shoulder you feel content resting against in the silence. 

~*~

Katara’s words fell like poetry softly off her tongue as she stirred sugar into their milk tea and let Toph experience the sweetness while she described colour without sight.

Katara says that yellow is an abrasive kind of warmth, and orange is her best friend. Yellow is trying to be inviting and kind but by god is she just annoying instead. Yellow is prickly and loud without taking a moment to breathe. Her pale twin is the soft primrose warmth that yellow wants to be, and the darker khaki sister is hardened and scarred and not worth talking to for the lack of response.

~*~

Suki’s words were poetic, but her attitude was solid and unmoving, unable to create a flow between the words. She always tells things how they are, and Toph liked that about her.

Suki says that green is a summer breeze and a comfortable touch on the top of your forearm. The hand that brushes up against you is not cold or warm, but matches your temperature exactly. Green is uncomfortable in an indescribable way, while simultaneously feeling like home.

~*~

Toph asked Aang to describe colours she heard often, but knew weren’t on the primary ‘wheel’ or whatever it was. She asked him about pink and purple and orange and burgundy, but he couldn’t. His words were abrupt and short, and he couldn’t create descriptions other than “orange is a mix between red and yellow” and “pink is a type of red but it feels different”.

He huffed softly and held her fingers in his own. Toph stayed laying on the grass, trying to imagine the sensations that Suki described, trying to put the concept of “green” to the ground beneath her.

“Come on,” Aang spoke suddenly, tugging gently at Toph’s hand. “I wanna show you something.”

She wanted to argue, stay here in the comfort of the grass, or remind Aang that he couldn’t really ‘show’ her anything, but she was curious now. Aang hates letting his friends down, and he no doubt felt he had let her down. Maybe he was taking her to get coffee to make up for it.

“Leave Beef here,” Aang said softly as he helped Toph to her feet, and Toph commanded the dog to stay as she let Aang lead her through the front door.

They were in his car next, and only drove for ten minutes or so before she felt him pull into a driveway of sorts and park.

When she stepped out of the car, she heard the distinct crunch of that hard, gravelly sand that balls itself up into ball-bearing sized chunks. She smiled at the feeling of the tiny rocks grinding beneath her shoes and let Aang lead her across the crunchy ground.

“There’s a bit of a step up here,” he murmured, holding her hand as he led them onwards, and Toph heard (and felt) the ground change from her crunchy, gravelly friends into a smooth pebble-laden path. She toed the ground to gauge the texture of its surface, and then let Aang walk her down the path. Everything around them smelled earthy and floral, and she could hear the soft murmurings of people around them, but more prominently she could hear and smell a busy cafe to their right, almost definitely conjoined to the nursery she was certain they were in.

“Here,” Aang gently took her hands as they stopped and led her fingers towards something, and Toph let him lead until her fingers hit something delicate, velvety and cool to the touch. 

Flower petals.

“Feel it, smell it,” Aang stepped away. “This is a rose bush, be careful of the thorns on the stems.”

Toph leant forward and pushed her nose towards the centre of the blooming rose, letting the scent fill her face and all of its holes, committing it to memory. 

“These are a really soft, pale pink colour, but their centre is a darker pink. Some people call it fuschia I think, or maybe magenta. Roses are Katara’s favourite flowers because of their smell.”

He gently guided Toph’s fingers to feel along the thorns and bristles that ran down the stem.

“Roses look beautiful, but they have a hidden weapon, and I can confirm that the thorns hurt a lot more than they look.”

That made her laugh, and Aang moved them a few steps to the left.

“Here, these ones are a peach colour, which is part way between pink and orange, Iguess,” he let her smell the flowers again. These ones had a softer scent than the last.   
“These ones haven’t fully bloomed, so they’re smaller than the others, and still closed up a bit.”

Toph felt the flowers and noticed that these ones were, in fact, smaller and more closed than the last ones.

“Are you ready to move on?”

Toph nodded and let Aang lead her to a new section.

“These are called allium flowers, and they’re technically onions,” Aang chuckled. “They don’t smell like onions unless you break the stem, they don’t really smell at all, but feel...”

Aang took both of her hands and guided them to cup around a soft sphere of petals.

A small sound of awe came out of her mouth before she could stop it as she felt the individual flowers, tiny, that made up this giant sphere of petals.

“This is a bright purple colour, and I wanted to keep this just to smells but I thought you’d like to feel it,” she could hear the smile in Aang’s voice. “Here, check out the stems.”

Toph let her hands wander around the sphere and found a stem, much thicker than she expected, and followed the stem down all the way to the ground – she didn’t realise the plant was on the ground, the top of it had been at her hip height for god’s sake – and found it connected to maybe twenty or more other stems at its base.

Aang handed her a small pot next, to hold while they walked to the next batch of flowers. She inhaled deeply and recognised the scent of lavender, feeling the tops of the herb delicately between her fingertips.

“Lavender is purple,” Aang explained, their elbows linked as they strolled. “And it’s stem is green, like most plants, but it’s a really cool pale green. The colours look really nice together.”

Toph could smell something light and sweet and floral before they even stopped, and Aang explained softly that jasmines were one of the nicest smelling, and smelliest, flowers in the world.

He gently took the lavender from her hands and let Toph feel the branches of leaves and petals.

“These ones are bright white."

White. Toph inhaled again.

“Wait, jasmine?” she paused. “Isn’t that the stuff Zuko makes his tea from?”

“Uh huh!” Aang responded eagerly. “It smells super different when it’s fresh, huh?”

Toph snorted. He could say that again, for sure.

Aang showed her orange carnations (which smelt spicy, and almost bitter), and bright pink chrysanthemums (which had a soft, herby scent rather than a sweet one), and when her nose started to get tickle-y from smelling so many different things, he took her inside to the cafe.

Aang asked Toph to let him order, and prattled off a list of drinks and small snacks or take-away meals.

He showed her mint green in the form of a milkshake, burgundy was a foreign soda called ‘portello’, bright pink was a strawberry cheesecake with a layer of jelly on top, black was a piece of liquorice from a pack he had kept in his pocket from home, and brown was a piece of salted caramel fudge.

They drove home and dispersed the leftover snacks between everyone at home.

Suki dibs’d the cheesecake and ran off before anyone could contest it, Katara happily took the soda bottle, Sokka snatched up the milkshake, Zuko gently took back his liquorice and asked Aang to not steal his stuff, and Toph held on tight to the packet of fudge in her pocket.

She liked it.


End file.
